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If Citadel Files Bankruptcy.........

Do not count Brother John aka: Roy Jaynes out of anything. Last I heard he was suffering thru a format change, talk radio of all things what a waste of talent, down the road in Chatanooga. I cannot believe he will put up with this long unless he is making huge money.
 
DelanoBoy said:
The Citadel cluster in Knoxville is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and get financing. Both of those are hard to find right now - willing buyers and financing. Educated guesswork is all you can count on right now. The cluster would probably fetch between $ 25 million and $ 40 million if a capable buyer could be located - probably closer to $ 30 million.

If the lenders that make up Citadel's new owners decide to start selling off pieces, I'm gonna hope there's somebody with big enough pockets to pick up the Southern clusters of Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Charleston, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Columbia, Knoxville, Lafayette, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Tri-Cities, and Tuscaloosa, as a new Southern Broadcasting Company.

Then, with make The Zone (and Titans Radio) in Nashville, The Sports Animal in Knoxville, The Xtreme Sports Monster in Tri-Cities, JOX and the Sports Monster in Birmingham, The Game in Columbia, and The Sports Animal in Little Rock the basis for a Southern Sports Network. Keep local shows and play-by play as is, but outside of those hours, keep the sports talk regional with programming spanning the South. Flip stations in remaining markets to add to the network, then buy stations in the remaining SEC cities and in pro cities like Charlotte and Jacksonville to complete the network.

Similarly, pool News/Talk stations to form the Southern News/Talk Network. With the remaining stations, put together networks of Country, Southern Rock, and Oldies.
 
Brother John was the nighttime dj on "WOKI FM 100" in the early eighties(1979-1982). Anyone that liked top 40 radio at that time in E Tn knew of Bro.John. He was an Afriican American jock with mostly a white teenage audience as best I can recall. John had a popular call-in
segment known as "boogie check" thats rumored to have been copied from John Landecker at Chicago's flamethrower 890 WLS. He sounded similar to "Wolfman Jack". A lot of us Bro. John fans miss those days because thats what made most of us want to do radio, but as you know, the fun has fallen out of it today. Sniff, Sniff!
 
So boogiecheck here on this board must be bro john, or a big fan,
 
jetfli said:
DelanoBoy said:
The Citadel cluster in Knoxville is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and get financing. Both of those are hard to find right now - willing buyers and financing. Educated guesswork is all you can count on right now. The cluster would probably fetch between $ 25 million and $ 40 million if a capable buyer could be located - probably closer to $ 30 million.

If the lenders that make up Citadel's new owners decide to start selling off pieces, I'm gonna hope there's somebody with big enough pockets to pick up the Southern clusters of Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Charleston, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Columbia, Knoxville, Lafayette, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, Tri-Cities, and Tuscaloosa, as a new Southern Broadcasting Company.

Then, with make The Zone (and Titans Radio) in Nashville, The Sports Animal in Knoxville, The Xtreme Sports Monster in Tri-Cities, JOX and the Sports Monster in Birmingham, The Game in Columbia, and The Sports Animal in Little Rock the basis for a Southern Sports Network. Keep local shows and play-by play as is, but outside of those hours, keep the sports talk regional with programming spanning the South. Flip stations in remaining markets to add to the network, then buy stations in the remaining SEC cities and in pro cities like Charlotte and Jacksonville to complete the network.

Similarly, pool News/Talk stations to form the Southern News/Talk Network. With the remaining stations, put together networks of Country, Southern Rock, and Oldies.

Like. Good idear for the sports programming. Provided the talent pool in the smaller markets is good enough to place on the air in some of the larger markets.
 
Unfortunately, while going bankrupt for you or me would mean a substantial change in our world, it's little more than a legal move to get the current owners free of the debt they took on when they paid too much for the stations when they bought them a few years ago. The most likely outcome is that some other large corporation or (even worse) private equity group buys the entire group at what they perceive to be 'a deal' and they continue to be operated by someone who knows little to nothing about the business.

In other words, we're talking about someone who has built a spreadsheet that says: It's easy...we make the sales staff increase revenues by 10% per year, cut their commissions to 4% and lay off 10% of our on-air and support staff, the business will cash flow this much money!

Math doesn't work? Just change the revenue and tell the sales staff to increase sales by 15% instead! Lay off 8 employees instead of 6. The spreadsheet doesn't care...it will let you key any number you need to make the deal work. What's the worst that can happen? If it doesn't work in reality, I'll just jump off the ship and leave the long-term employees there to try to pay the bills! (Is any of this sounding familiar to any of you?).

As much as I would like to hope and pray for everyone involved that there is a local 'hero' who steps up and buys stations in each of these markets to operate the stations with a vision of 'what could be', I suspect a large group, unrelated to the business will buy them and operate them just as if they had bought a McDonald's franchise in the market. How many burgers can we sell and how few minimum-wage 15 year old kids can we hire to cook them?

My bet...the group stays (relatively) intact and someone as bad (or worse) than Citadel continues to operate them with the same "short-term cash to the bottom line this quarter" mentality that we've come to know and love from the likes of Cumulus and Clear Channel.

You want fries with that Taylor Swift song, mam?
 
Citadel owns no stations in Charlotte (or North Carolina).

I do indeed remember Brother John now. He was a cool DJ, broadcasting on OKI from the Flag Pole.. got to be a legend real quick from Chatt to Tri.. Sort of like John R at WLAC back in the day.. smooth, hip and played killer music. I remember him well.


Really, I don't see somebody paying big bucks for all the Cit stations in the south. That would be a really bad economic move right now, with absolutely no prospects for a positive financial gain (and again folks.. the investment company bean-counters are here to stay).

What I'm reading is the perfect scenario where some rich kid-type with money to burn, takes a notion to buy up some stations and do what he wants to with them. It has happened before..

1). Howard Hughes bought KLAS-TV, Las Vegas, just because he wanted to see his lousy movies on the TV station where he lived (that was the only reason)... purchase price: 30 million dollars just laying around his bank vault.

2). The National Life and Accident Insurance Company started WSM Radio, simply because they needed a station to broadcast the Grand Ole Opry (that's documented in the archives at Vanderbilt University). They wanted a strong signal, and in 1924, 50-kw clear channels were pretty easily to come by (it took them a year to get the equiment in place to sign on in 1925).

3). Ted Turner used some spare change just lying around his daddy's outdoor sign business and a couple of his daddy's radio stations that were cash cows, and purchased WJRJ-TV, Atlanta, just so he could try to program against Atlanta's big 3 network affiliates, and prove he could beat 'em. The rest is superstation history.

4). There are some that say the Taft family in Ohio started up Taft Broadcasting and its 5 TV, 5 AM's and 5 FM's, just to further the political ideals of the family that sent William Howard Taft to the presidency.

As much as we would like to believe it, there are no TV entrepreneurs anymore, no radio swashbucklers, no devil-may-care, 'let's-go-out-on-a-limb' Richie Rich's, lighting cigarettes with 100-dollar bills..

No "c'mon dudes, let's play radio" anymore.

The days of dreaming are over.. long gone.. we'll never see them again. But your ideas and suggestions to take me back to a carefree time, in a back part of heaven somewhere.....

Keep 'em coming!
 
abccbsnbcfox:Here's a memory. Larry Lujack "Big 89 WLS" Chicago. Mid 70's to 1982. A little boy back then with a dream. That was me. 84 WHAS Louisville, 66 WNBC New York. Spiderman Harrison 1510 WLAC Nashville till 1980, 77 WABC NY. 99 WNOX, Knoxville Even good ole Johnson City-790 WETB(now a gospel station), 1590 WJSO(now WKTP, WKPT network, Kingsport an oldies station that can't be heard out of the immediate Tri-Cities like they once were). Yeah, radio has definitely gone to the dogs. Oh, I never got to hear "Wolfman Jack" missed that one.
 
OMG.. I thought I was the only person left who remembers those good old days on nighttime radio.. Larry at WLS was probably the best, but everybody carved out a niche for themselves. Radio back then was personal..

In the Tri-Cities, don't forget WKIN-1320. They were a big player: 5,000 watts all the way to Morristown. Between them, WETB and WJSO in Tri-Cities, and WNOX, WRJZ and WKGN in Knoxville, there were none better. They all played Top 40, didn't talk a lot, commercials were about a minute, and nobody could touch 'em.
 
As I recall in the 70's and earlier,I think stations like WETB, WJSO WNOX 'RJZ maybe the jocks programmed their own music. Not until the

advent of CHR where the music was programmed by a omg can you say,"program director" at that station and not some doofus a thousand

miles a way. I still listen to the 50kw flamethrowers at night with their news-talk and political jibberish. The best stations around nowadays

are 750 WSB Atlanta(really great when they had the Braves). The Country Legend 650 AM WSM Nashville. 1120 KMOX St. Louis is cool. Has

an oldies show on saturday night "Route 66" when the Blues, Rams or Cardinals are not playing. I'm getting old cause now were in the era of

the internet, i-pods and other music outlets and I still listen to tapes and not ashamed of it.
 
kd4rnc1964 said:
As I recall in the 70's and earlier,I think stations like WETB, WJSO WNOX 'RJZ maybe the jocks programmed their own music. Not until the

advent of CHR where the music was programmed by a omg can you say,"program director" at that station and not some doofus a thousand

miles a way.

Nah. The "PD" still called the shots way back then. We had clocks to follow, cards to pull and carts/reels/45s to flip and shuffle. Could sneak in a couple of "jock picked" selections every now and then, but mostly it was by the "format."
 
If not mistaken WOKI wasnt a true CHR either,, I think the jocks played alot of the popular music that performed well in other similar markets.. At least thats what JP told me...
 
Mid West Clubber said:
If not mistaken WOKI wasnt a true CHR either,, I think the jocks played alot of the popular music that performed well in other similar markets.. At least thats what JP told me...

During the automation era from 1974-1979, it depended on what jock you were talking about. Mike Beverly selected the A and B rotation selections and had his own show. JL Meyers sent in his tapes from Nashville, so he controlled about half his show. The Brothers usually went with the normal evening rotation unless Jimmy Buffett or Charlie Daniels had a new album out - then they might feature an album cut exclusive to their show. After Labor Day 1979, when the station went live, it was more open formatted.
 
Going back to the subject at hand, do you think Citadel might try selling off their smaller markets?

I was talking to someone about this the other day. Here's my thoughts on the Tri-Cities if that were to occur- someone with more knowledge could provide insights.

If the block on Free Hill Rd. went up for sale, I could see Bristol buying up WQUT and keeping it as it is.

I gather a church would buy up WKIN/WGOC whatever it is called these days (AM 1320) and use it for religious programming.

Then here's where it gets interesting. I would imagine both Bristol and the Hills would want WJCW's programming and try to buy it. The thing is- Bristol has no interest in AMs and I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to buy the WKOS signal and then move Rush/Hannity/Gallagher et all to the FM.

But what about The Sports Monster? ESPN has bought up affiliates such as this and they may want the WKOS signal. Now, would they be interested in the Tri-Cities? I don't know. But it's conceivable if they did, they could spend more for the WKOS signal than Bristol could.

I also thought the AM 640 signal might be a nice compliment to WXBQ if they restored classic country on the station. Would Bristol's opinion on AM being so outdated be changed if they thought it could support the mothership? I honestly don't know. They could probably get the station as a throw-in if they got WQUT, and it is the best AM signal in the market.

The Hills would be just happy with WJCW and that's probably all they could afford.

I couldn't see Holston or Erwin or any other outlet spend the money to buy additional stations, and I can't see a big conglomorate come in and buy the stations, either.
 
Talent? Here are my ideas.

WQUT might keep their current staff but lean towards voicetracking. Any DJs thinking of leaving the industry might be eased out, but there is a lot of talent and heritage there and I think Bristol would recognize it to a certain degree. I could be wrong- some of the old WQUT people like Rufus Hurt used to be at WQUT and there's a lot of expense involved with all that talent. But it's conceivable.

WJCW would probably lose all of their staff if Bristol got ahold of it. They'd go with their current newsreaders on WFHG and eliminate the morning show, perhaps reinstating Don Imus.

If the Hills got it they'd try to get their own talent on there- you know Matt Hill would love a shot to be on that station.

WKOS is gone along with their staff. I don't think AM 1320 has any staff per se.


If ESPN bought The Sports Monster I think they would leave the current staff in place, but it would also be conceivable they could use it as sort of a training ground for developing their own talent or even go all automation.

If a rich sports fan wanted it and ESPN didn't, the whole game changes.
 
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